Monthly Archives: December 2012

As this is the last post of 2012, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank all of you readers, commenters, former players and fans, for reserving a few minutes each day to read and respond to Tales from the American Football League. When I first began writing Tales roughly two years ago, I truly had no idea about blogging. However, I had some neat autographed football cards, and plenty of stories, and I wanted to share them with folks who like me, enjoyed the AFL. So I began writing, and put together a new post every week, or every month, and with no idea about how this whole thing worked. A few readers checked things out, but it appeared that I was writing mostly for the sake of writing.read more

Quick… Name the former Boston Red Sox player who was an original minority owner of an American Football League team. Dom DiMaggio, you say? Very good. DiMaggio, a star centerfielder for the Boston Red Sox from 1940-1953, did have a partial stake in the Patriots when the league kicked off in 1960. However, there is another man with whom DiMaggio shares such credentials. His name was Ed McGah, and he was a longtime partial owner of the Oakland Raiders.read more

It is an unavoidable truth that we are all getting older, and our favorite AFL players are no different. We lost many great athletes and men in 2012. My thanks to Mike Thomas of Near Mint Cards and Ange Coniglio of Remember the AFL for their assistance in spreading the word of these passings throughout the year.

Guest blogger, Bob Swick, takes a stroll down memory lane with his 1965 Topps cards. How many of us have similar memories to Bob’s? Buying bubble gum cards with nickels and dimes, chewing gum and sorting cards, and praying those last few cards for your set would show up in the next pack. It was a rite of passage for many of us!

#001 – Tom Addison

In 1965, I opened my first packs of football cards and my road to a lifetime of football card and memorabilia collecting began. I was fascinated by opening up packs of cards that were much bigger than the NFL Philadelphia brand of the same year. Topps gum seemed sweeter to me, and I really thought the “rub offs” that were inside these packs were cool to rub off on my school binder.read more